


Report Club

by Slant



Series: Bureaucrat effect [6]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Bureaucracy, Gen, reports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 12:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slant/pseuds/Slant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bureaucratic!Shepard makes a poorly-chosen efforts towards crew cohesion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Report Club

**Author's Note:**

> Minor update because I remembered the existance of M. Sidoli's clasic work "Farting as a defence against unspeakable dread".   
> Sublime.

Afterwards, no one could remember whose idea it was, although one strain of thought blamed Mordin. The story was that he'd mentioned that back in his academic days, his research group had got together and told each other about either their current work, or given short presentations on other people's work. Shepard had jumped on the idea as an opportunity for developing comprehension, communication and intra-personal skills, as well as developing expertise in whatever the presentations were about. Shepard had also volunteered to assign anyone who didn't have anything to talk about a personally-appropriate document in fitting with their personal development plan. 

Which had put her on the horns of a dilemma: inflict the baroque glory of "Actions Needed to Evaluate the Impact of Efforts to Estimate Costs of Reports and Studies", the so-called "report about reports about reports" (it's major recommendation: the preparation of a report about the report about reports about reports) on Jacob or Miranda? Annoying Jacob "we don't commission a team to write a report" Taylor was very important for crew morale, at least, for the commander's morale, but in Miranda's hands...

The report was in fact, brilliant, but it achieved that brilliance by piling up so much mediocrity that the heady peaks of brilliance became readily accessible to anyone sufficiently ploddingly determined to make the dull repetitive trek. Miranda, by contrast, was actually given to transcendent leaps of cognition, which she had carefully trained herself to stop after, back up, fill in the steps so that normal people could follow her, in an attempt to appear to be a merely gifted administrator/spy. The cognitive dissonance might actually drive her to express an entirely new emotion. 

That Jack volunteered to talk about "Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant" was a surprise, but since that was exactly what Shepard would have given her anyway, it did not make any real difference. "Markers" listed design criteria for consideration should one decide to build a hellscape to last fifty thousand years. It was the single most metal government report ever released for public consumption[1] by a human[2] state. Jack's talk included such highlights as "Check this out, yeah? Figure 4.3-1: Some kind of crazy fucked up spike field. You don't want to live there. 'course this was before Mass effect an' shit, so no one'd seen Tuchunka, but even next to that hellhole, this looks pretty bad." 

[1]Project Pluto's "Environmental impact assessment for nuclear powered flight." did use the phrase "hypersonic rain of radioactive debris" but it was so humiliatingly stupid that its release never ceased to be a national security issue.

[2] The "VIndication Of Local Expansion as Necessitated by Clan Excellence (VI.O.L.E.N.C.E.)" regulations of Clan Jorgal are essentially some rather drab zoning laws with "Unless you hit someone with an axe" inserted before each clause.

Grunt had come on board with the idea surprisingly readily, explaining that any of Shepard's Krunt had better be ready to become a battlemaster upon Shepard's death, because bowing to any but Shepard would dishonor Shepard, the bower and the rest of the krunt. There was a not very subtle threat about what would happen to any who dishonored Grunt in this way. His interpritation of "Farting as a defence against unspeakable dread" was delivered with gusto and, unfortunately, smell-o-vision. 

Kasumi had filched Jondum Bau's files on herself, and intended to talk about his adequacy and her extraordinary ability, but after she'd cut the parts that made her look lucky, or gave away tricks that she wanted to use again, there wasn't a lot left.


End file.
